Jewelry rope chains have been made for many years. Although rope chains can be made by machine, the better quality rope chains are usually manufactured by hand. While a rope chain has the feel of a rope, it is actually made up of a series of individual links made from a precious metal, such as gold, which links are fastened together. The links of hand-made rope chains are made with a tighter fit and are more visually appealing than are machine-made rope chains. A number of annular links are connected and intertwined together in a systematic and repetitive pattern, resulting in an eye-pleasing, flexible and delicate-appearing gold chain that looks like a fine braided spiral of connected segmented portions. In a conventional rope chain, the pattern producing the rope chain is repeated every four links and is herein referred to as the four-link rope chain. In an improvement to the conventional rope chain, it is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,517 that the links can be constructed in different and narrower dimensions so that the pattern is repeated every six links. By narrowing the cross-section of the link, the six-link rope chain's connected segments appear finer than those of the four-link version and consequently provides a more delicate and refined presentation than that previously known in the prior art of rope chains. By varying the dimensions of the annular link, even finer link arrangement can be obtained. The method of making rope chains is well-known in the art and U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,517, which discloses in detail the making of both four- and six-link rope chains, is hereby incorporated by reference herein.
The conventional four-link rope chain is costly t make. Not only is the precious metal expensive, but the manufacture of the rope chain is labor intensive. The six-link rope chain decreases the amount of precious metal necessary to manufacture a chain of a same length; however, because the links are finer, more labor is required to produce a six-link rope chain than a four-link rope chain of the same length.